People Who Throw Away Their Experience
“I HAVE no idea why that baby should have died,” said an old-time physician, who had more zeal than skill; “for I tried everything, gave it every remedy I ever heard of, and yet it died.” A great many people who fail in life are like this old physician. They say they don’t know why they have failed, because they have tried everything. They do not realize that it is this very “trying everything” that has ruined them. Young men everywhere, who have plenty of success material in them, are killing their possibilities by constantly changing from one thing to another, shifting about without any definite purpose or plan, “trying everything.” Take, for example, one of those bright, typical youth who may be found in every community. He gets a job in a store, and works there for a month or two. Then he begins to grow restless; he thinks there are better opportunities in railroading than in storekeeping, so he secures work on a railroad. After a while he tires of this also, and goes to work on a farm for a season. He abandons the farm for the district schoolhouse. After teaching school for a term or two, he studies law awhile, and after that, surveying. Then he throws up everything, and goes to the West. There he works a short time in the mines; but he doesn’t strike “pay dirt,” and he begins to grow disheartened, and to wonder why he doesn’t succeed. Succeed! How could he? Could the most versatile genius that ever lived succeed in becoming a practical storekeeper, railroad man, farmer, school-teacher, lawyer, surveyor, and miner, all within the space of a few years? A boy who attempts to do everything is like the one who tries to roll a hundred snowballs at once. He takes a turn at each, but by the time he gets back to the one with which he started, he finds that it has lost in bulk, and so on through the whole number. But he toils away, and presently boasts to a companion, who has rolled up one huge ball: “Oh, see! I have made a hundred little balls while you have made only one!” “Yes, that is true,” replies the other, “but I don’t want a hundred little balls; I couldn’t do anything with them. I want one large ball that I can use as a fort,—one that will protect me, if need be, from the biting cold and the falling snow! While you were scattering your efforts on a hundred different points, I concentrated mine on this one. I don’t see what use all those little bits of things are to you, and you’ve spent just as much time on them as I’ve spent on my fort. You see every time my ball turns over once, it accumulates a hundred times more snow than all of yours. It gains force and momentum with every turn, while all the energy that you expend on your hundred balls is practically thrown away. They do not gather force and momentum as mine does. They will never amount to anything.” The principle involved in making a big, practical, effective snowball and a big, practical, effective man is the same. Concentrate your efforts, and be something; scatter them, and be nothing; you can take your choice. If you want to amount to anything worth while, in the first place, go into the thing that nature intended you for as soon as you can. Then stick to it, through thick and thin. Don’t go into it for a few months or a year or two, but for a lifetime. Stick and hang on, no matter how hard it goes with you. Broaden, deepen, and enlarge your vocation, whether it is farming or building up a newspaper, until its expansion is equal to the abilities within you. This is the way to succeed. Hold on to your experience. It is valuable capital, and you throw it away every time you change your occupation.—Success.